Semi Final Module in Lin 002 Language Culture and Society

SEMI-FINAL TERM
LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

A. Overview
Language and culture are intertwined. A particular language usually points out to a
specific group of people. When you interact with another language, it means that you are also
interacting with the culture that speaks the language. You cannot understand one's culture
without accessing its language directly.
When you learn a new language, it not only involves learning its alphabet, the word
arrangement and the rules of grammar, but also learning about the specific society’s customs
and behavior. When learning or teaching a language, it is important that the culture where the
language belongs be referenced, because language is very much ingrained in the culture.
Complex is one term that you can use to describe human communication since
paralanguage is used to transmit messages. Paralanguage is specific to a culture, therefore the
communication with other ethnic groups can lead to misunderstandings.
When you grow up in a specific society, it is inevitable to learn the glances, gestures and
little changes in voice or tone and other communication tools to emphasize or alter what you
want to do or say. These specific communication techniques of one culture are learned mostly
by imitating and observing people, initially from parents and immediate relatives and later from
friends and people outside the close family circle.
Body language, which is also known as kinesics, is the most obvious type of
paralanguage. These are the postures, expressions and gestures used as non-verbal language.
However, it is likewise possible to alter the meaning of various words by changing the character
or tone of the voice.
B. Learning Outcomes
1. Trace the possibility of language origin in a cultural (anthropological) perspective.
2. Recognize sign language as a language of cultural significance to people with special
needs.
3. Identify the different theories of anthropological linguistics and relate them to society
and language learning through a case presentation
C. Topics
Lesson 1: Accounts on the Origin of Language
Lesson 2: Biblical, Mythological, Historical, and Scientific Accounts
Lesson3: Otto Jesperson’s Language Origin Hypotheses
Activity 1: Trace the origin of language in an anthropological perspective.
Lesson 4: Semiotics or Sign Language
Lesson 5: Icon, Index, Symptom, Signal, and Symbol
Lesson 6: Sign Languages (Finger Spelling, Filipino Sign Language, other means of SL, etc.)
Activity 2: Discuss the common signs that are understood globally.
Differentiate terms in lessons 4, 5, and 6.
Lesson 7: Theories in Language and Culture
A. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
B. Ethnopoetics
C. Oral Gestures Theory by Paget
Activity 3. Discuss the research results of common theories in language and culture.
LANGUAGE AND HISTORY

A. Overview
All social animals communicate with each other, from bees and ants to whales and apes,
but only humans have developed a language which is more than a set of prearranged signals.
Our speech even differs in a physical way from the communication of other animals. It
comes from a cortical speech center which does not respond instinctively, but organizes
sound and meaning on a rational basis. This section of the brain is unique to humans.
When and how the special talent of language developed is impossible to say. But it is
generally
assumed that its evolution must have been a long process.
Our ancestors were probably speaking a million years ago, but with a slower delivery, a
smaller vocabulary and above all a simpler grammar than we are accustomed to.
The origins of human language will perhaps remain forever obscure. By contrast the
origin of individual languages has been the subject of very precise study over the past two
centuries.
There are about 5000 languages spoken in the world today (a third of them in Africa),
but scholars group them together into relatively few families - probably less than twenty.
Languages are linked to each other by shared words or sounds or grammatical constructions.
The theory is that the members of each linguistic group have descended from one language, a
common ancestor. In many cases that original language is judged by the experts to have been
spoken in surprisingly recent times - as little as a few thousand years ago.
The most widespread group of languages today is the Indo-European, spoken by half the
world's population. This entire group, ranging from Hindi and Persian to Norwegian and English,
is believed to descend from the language of a tribe of nomads roaming the plains of eastern
Europe and western Asia
(in modern terms centring on the Ukraine) as recently as about 3000 BC.
From about 2000 BC people speaking Indo-European languages begin to spread through
Europe, eventually reaching the Atlantic coast and the northern shores of the Mediterranean.
They also penetrate far into Asia - occupying the Iranian plateau and much of India.
Another linguistic group, of significance in the early history of west Asia and still of great
importance today, is the Semitic family of languages. These also are believed to derive from the
language of just one tribal group, possibly nomads in southern Arabia.
By about 3000 BC Semitic languages are spoken over a large tract of desert territory
from southern Arabia to the north of Syria. Several Semitic peoples play a prominent part in the
early civilization of the region, from the Babylonians and Assyrians to
the Hebrews and Phoenicians. And one Semitic language, Aramaic becomes for a while the
Lingua franca of the Middle East.
B. Learning Outcomes
1. Identify noteworthy linguist and their contributions to language that it is today.
2. Trace the development of language and the English language in a historical perspective
from Anglo-Saxon to global periods.
3. Recognize the language family of English including the modern foreign languages
related to it in phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics.
4. Differentiate the three Englishes-Old, Middle, and Modern – through in-dept historical
linguistics analysis case.
5. Analyze the changes of English from Old to Modern through tracing Grimm’s Law and
the Great Vowel Shift in sample discourses.
C. Topics
Lesson 1: Historical Timeline of Noteworthy Linguists(from Aristotle to Lowth, Jones, de
Saussure, Chomsky)
Lesson 2: Historical Development of Language (Evolutionary or Darwinian)
Lesson 3: Historical Development of English (from Anglo-Saxon to Global English)
Activity 1. Group Activity( Lessons 1, 2, 3 will be reported by assigned group)
Lesson 4: The English Language Family Tree
Activity 2. Individual Task: Present your English Family Tree through graphic organizer.
Lesson 5: The Proto Indo-European/Germanic
Lesson 6: Old English, Middle English, and Modern English
Activity 3. Differentiate the following :
 Proto Indo-European from Germanic
 Old, Middle, Modern English
Lesson 7: Changes in the English Language
 Grimm’s Law
 Great Vowel Shift
Activity 4. Discuss the changes under Grimm’s Law and Great Vowel Shift.

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SEMI-FINAL TERM

LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

LANGUAGE AND HISTORY

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